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The Flotilla: Israel’s Lose-Lose-Lose Situation

Israel was faced with a lose-lose-lose situation.Naturally, Israel lost. There were no good choices regarding the handling of the flotilla that was trying to run the blockade.

Permitting the flouting of the blockade (even for humanitarian supplies) would have established a precedent that would inevitably lead to tolerating military supplies. Firing on the ships would have foreclosed any possibility of a bloodless resolution. Boarding was the best of Israel’s terrible choices. In theory, boarding the ships and diverting them to an Israeli port offered some small possibility of a win-win for Israel and genuine humanitarian peace activists.

However, among the idealists were some people who did not want to give peace a chance, who wanted the confrontation, the bloodletting. As their chants and signs, before the flotilla left port in Turkey indicated, they were interested in building up Hamas and carrying out their stated program of “Death to Israel.” The flotilla had ample warning that they would be stopped. They were offered the alternative of a port in Israel, where the cargo would be vetted and then shipped into Gaza. They chose confrontation.

While having a boat boarded from rafts and helicopters is surely an anxiety-producing event, there should not have been any expectation that they would be shot, killed or tortured. The tapes are clear, some of the “peace activists” attacked first.

But this is a mere fact in a sea of spin, and despite the fact that Israel was and is within its legal right to blockade a territory which has called for its destruction, this does not much matter to the world. This is a maelstrom that is pulling Israel yet deeper into the abyss.

Politically this is a disaster. This is no longer a world where an Entebbe Raid can be pulled off with only one fatality–the brother of Prime Minister Netanyahu. This is a sophisticated world of instant communication and chess-like plotting, a world where the shallow and the profound get mixed up and motives run in deep underwater currents.

The mainstream pundits are talking about how Israel has ruined its relationship with Turkey–its closest friend in the Muslim World. But this is only half true. Israel does have an historic relationship with Turkey, which is the main reason it refuses to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This relationship has been with the secularists and military who were largely in control until recently. The new government is Islamist and just itching for a rationale for breaking off with Israel. This is much of Turkey’s motivation for enabling the flotilla. The Islamists got what they wanted. Maybe now Israel will acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. If so, it will be the only positive from this horrible story.

The sad truth is that this also gave Egypt an excuse to lift the enforcement of their blockade of Gaza. While the world relentlessly criticizes Israel’s blockade, Egypt enforces its own to little criticism from the world. But now, for the moment, that has been lifted and arms, along with humanitarian aid, will pour in. So, Israel loses Turkey, the effectiveness of the blockade and the public relations struggle.

Just when you think that Israel couldn’t possibly fall further from favor in the eyes of the world, this happens. It is quite a trick with Hamas bulldozing homes, killing members of the Palestinian Authority and responding to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza with over 10,000 rockets fired into Israel, for the world to see Hamas on the moral high ground. It is beyond ironic; it is obscene.

Yet this is what this flotilla has done–and it is right out the playbook written by the creators of Israel. Obviously someone in the Muslim world read Leon Uris’s book, Exodus, which told the story of how the brave Jews, victims of Hitler’s Holocaust, tried to bring supplies–military and humanitarian–into Palestine. It paints both those on the ships and the Jewish settlers as heroic victims. And, of course, it makes the British into unfeeling monsters for stopping and sometimes sinking boats in the Jewish flotilla.

The world saw Israel as David and the Arabs as Goliath in the 50s and early 60s. After the 6-Day War, Israel was recast as Goliath and the Palestinians as David. Now the metaphor changes and Israel becomes the British and the Palestinians the Jews. Again, beyond ironic, obscene.

The so-called peace process will stall again. The world will condemn Israel again. The Turkish Islamists have won this round, as have Hamas. Such condemnation has consequences, obviously bad, for Israel but also for the larger world. As Israel is pushed deeper into isolation, any reason to negotiate or sacrifice for the good of the world is eliminated. Israel is likely to feel more threatened and become more unilateral in its actions.

Much of the Arab and Muslim World are calling for its utter destruction. The lesson of the 20th century is that this may be more than rhetoric, which mandates Israel to act for its own survival and damn the PR and Politics. Mr. Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1949, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Israel knows that neither subscribing to International Law nor membership in the UN creates a mandate for self-destruction.

We need to do everything possible to prevent the ultimate lose-lose situation from occurring where Israel has to choose survival or destruction. Israel will not go gentle.

As usual, Mr. Dobrer has chosen to present the event as it truly is – a lose, lose, lose situation. Why can’t the politicians see as clearly?

I find it amazing that 5 ships were boarded peacefully and searched without incident. Naturally, none of these ships were photographed by the media –only the sixth ship containing the most militant of the activists – and this selective “news” was broadcast to all the world. I wonder what organization the militants REALLY belong to. No matter, we will only be fed information as the media sees fit.

Perhaps it is time to consider eliminating all the Arabs and Muslims. I wonder how they would like THAT idea. Maybe then the world would be a more peaceful place.

Thank you, Mr. Dobrer, for having the eyes to see clearly and the brain to interpret accurately what you see.